The One-Way Trail: A story of the cattle country
He pointed at the revolvers hanging on the wall.
“They shall decide who has first speak with her,” he said. “We’ll empty six at a mark, and the one who does the best shooting has–first go in.”
Will shrugged.
“I don’t like it.”
“It’s the best way. We’re a fair match. You’re reckoned the boss shot in the hills, and I don’t guess there’s any one on this ranch handier than I am. We’ve both played with those two guns a heap. It’ll save bad blood between us. What say?”
Will shook his head.
“It’s bad. Still–” He looked at the guns. He was thinking swiftly. He knew that he was a wonderful shot with a revolver. He was in constant practice, too. Jim was a good shot, but then his practice was very limited. Yes, the chances were all in his favor.
“Get busy then,” he said presently, with apparent reluctance.
He rose and moved toward the guns.
“Whose choice?” he demanded.
Nor did he observe the other’s smile as he received his reply.
“It’s yours.”
While Will chose his weapon with studied care, Jim picked up the soap box and fumbled through his pockets till he found a piece of chalk. With this he drew a bull’s-eye on the bottom of the box, and sketched two rough circles around it. Will had made his choice of weapons by the time the target was completed.
“Will it do?” Jim inquired, holding up the box for his inspection.
“It’s got to,” was the churlish reply.
Jim gave him a quick glance as he moved across the room and possessed himself of the remaining pistol. Then he examined its chambers and silently led the way out of the hut.
They left the ranch buildings and moved out upon the prairie. A spot was selected, and the box set down. Then Jim paced off sixty yards.
“Sixty,” he said, as he came to a halt.
“Sixty,” agreed Will, who had paced beside him.
“It’s your choice. Will you–get busy?”
“All right.”
Will stepped on to the mark confidently, raising his gun with the surety of a man who does not know what it means to miss. Yet, before dropping the hammer, he braced himself with unusual care.
“Plonk!” The bullet struck the box. He had found his mark, and in rapid succession the remaining five chambers of his gun were emptied. Each shot found its mark with deadly accuracy, for Will meant to win the contest.
Then they set out to inspect the target. Will led now. He was eager to ascertain the actual result. An exclamation of joy broke from him as he snatched up the box. The bull’s-eye was about two inches in diameter; one of his shots had passed through it, three had broken its outer line, while the other two were within a quarter of an inch of the little white patch. All six shots could have been covered by a three-inch circle.
“Good,” cried Thorpe. And he turned the box round and drew another target on its side.
The new bull’s-eye was a shade smaller. It may have been accident. It may have been that Jim preferred to make his own task more difficult than err on the side of his own advantage. Will said nothing, and they walked back to the firing point.
Jim lifted his gun and fired. His shots rang out like the rattle of a maxim gun, so swiftly did he empty the six chambers. In a few moments they were once more on their way to inspect the target.
Five bullets had passed through the bull’s-eye, the sixth had broken its line.
“I shall see Eve to-morrow morning,” said Jim quietly. “You can see her later.”
Without a word Will turned away, and moved off toward the ranch. Jim followed him. Nor was a word exchanged between them till the hut was reached, and Will had unhitched his horse from the tying-post.
“Going?” inquired Jim, for something to say.
“Yes.”
There was no mistaking the younger man’s tone, and his friend looked away while he leaped into the saddle.
Jim seemed to have drawn none of the satisfaction which the winning of the match should have afforded him, for he flung the box which he had been carrying aside as though it had offended him. He wanted to speak, he wanted to say something pleasant. He wanted to banish that surly look from Will’s eyes; but somehow he could find nothing to say, nothing to do. He looked on while the other lifted his reins to ride off. Then, in desperation, he came up to the horse’s shoulder.
“Shake, Will,” he said.
It was the effort of a big heart striving to retain a precious friendship which he felt was slipping away from him.
But Will did not see the outstretched hand. He hustled his horse, and, in moving off, his own right foot struck the waiting man violently. It was almost as though he had kicked him.
Jim watched him go with regretful eyes. Then, as the man disappeared among the ranch buildings, he turned and slowly made his way to the bunk house of the horse-breakers.
CHAPTER III
IN BARNRIFF
It has been said that the pretentiousness of a newly carpentered Western American settlement can only be compared to the “side” of a nigger wench, weighted down under the gaudy burden of her Emancipation Day holiday gown. Although, in many cases, the analogy is not without aptness, yet, in frequent instances, it would be a distinct libel. At any rate, Barnriff boasted nothing of pretentiousness. Certainly Barnriff was not newly carpentered. Probably it never had been.
It was one of those places that just grow from a tiny seedling; and, to judge by the anemic result of its effort, that original seedling could have been little better than a “scratching” post on an ill-cared-for farm, or perhaps a storm shelter. Certainly it could not have risen above an implement shed in the ranks of structural art. The general impression was in favor of the “scratching” post, for one expects to grow something better than weeds on a rich loam soil.
The architect of Barnriff–if he ever existed–was probably a drunkard, not an uncommon complaint in that settlement, or a person qualified for the state asylum. The inference is drawn from strong circumstantial evidence, and not from prejudice. As witness, the saloon seemed to have claimed his most serious effort as a piece of finished construction. Here his weakness peeps through in no uncertain manner. The bar occupies at least half of the building, and the fittings of it are large enough to accommodate sufficient alcohol for an average man to swim in. His imagination must have been fully extended in this design, for the result suggested its having been something in the nature of a labor of affection. The other half of the building was divided up into three rooms: a tiny dining-room (obviously the pleasures of the table had no great appeal for him), a small bedroom for the proprietor (who seemed to have been considered least of all), and one vast dormitory, to accommodate those whose misfortunes of the evening made them physically incapable of negotiating the intricacies of the village on their way home.
Of course, this evidence might easily have been nullified, or even have been turned to the architect’s favor, had the rest of the village borne testimony for him. A clever counsel defending would probably have declared that the architect knew the people of the village, and was merely supplying their wants. Of course he knew them, and their wants–he was probably one of them.
However, the rest of the village was all against him. Had he been an abstemious man, there is no doubt but the village market-place would have been a square, or a triangle, an oval, a circle, or–well, some definite shape. As it was, it had no definite shape. It was not even irregular. It was nothing–just a space, with no apparent defining line.
Then there were no definite roads–at least, the roads seemed to have happened, and ran just where the houses permitted them. It was a reversal of ordinary civilized methods, which possibly had its advantages. There were certainly no straight lines for the men-folk to walk after leaving the saloon at night for their homes.
As for the houses which composed the village, they were too uncertain to be described in any but a general view of their design, and their grouping. In the latter, of course, the evidence was all against the designer of the place. Who but a madman or a drunkard would set up a laundry next to the coal yard?
Then another thing. Two churches–they called them “churches” in Barnriff–of different denomination, side by side. On Sundays the discord that went on was painful. The voices of the preachers were in endless conflict through the thin weather-boarding sides, and when the rival harmoniums “got busy” there was nothing left for the confused congregations but to chant their rival hymns to some popular national tune upon which they were mutually agreed beforehand. The incongruities of this sort were so many that even the most optimistic could not pass them unheeded.
As regards the style of the buildings themselves, the less said about them the better. They were buildings, no one could deny that; but even an impressionist painter could claim no beauty for them. Windows and doors, weather-boarding, and shingle roof. One need say no more, except that they were, in the main, weatherproof. But wait. There was one little house that had a verandah and creepers growing around it. It was well painted, too, and stood out amongst its frowzy neighbors a thing approaching beauty.
But Barnriff, as a residential hamlet, was hardly worth considering seriously. It was a topsyturvy sort of place, and its methods were in keeping with its design. It was full of unique combinations of trade. Some of them were hardly justifiable. The doctor of the place was also a horse-dealer, with a side line in the veterinary business. Any tooth extraction needed was forcibly performed by John Rust, the blacksmith. The baker, Jake Wilkes, shod the human foot whenever he was tired of punching his dough. The Methodist lay-preacher, Abe C. Horsley, sold everything to cover up the body, whenever he wasn’t concerned with the soul. Then there was Angel Gay, an estimable butcher and a good enough fellow; but it hardly seemed right that he should be in combination with Zac Restless, the carpenter, for the disposal of Barnriff’s corpses. However, these things were, and had been accepted by the village folk for so long that it seemed almost a pity to disturb them.
Barnriff, viewed from a distance, was not without a certain picturesqueness; but the distance had to be great enough to lose sight of the uncouthness which a close inspection revealed. Besides, its squalor did not much matter. It did not affect the temper of the folk living within its boundaries. To them the place was a little temporary “homelet,” to coin a word. For frontier people are, for the most part, transient. They only pause at such place on their fighting journey through the wilder life. They pass on in time to other spheres, some on an upward grade, others down the long decline, which is the road of the ne’er-do-well. And with each inhabitant that comes and goes, some detail of evolution is achieved by the little hamlet through which they pass, until, in the course of long years, it, too, has fought its way upward to the mathematical precision and bold glory of a modern commercial city, or has joined in the downward march of the ne’er-do-well.
The blazing summer sun burned down upon the unsheltered village. There was no shade anywhere–that is, outside the houses. For the place had grown up on the crests of the bald, green rollers of the Western plains as though its original seedling had been tossed there by the wanton summer breezes, and for no better reason.
Anthony Smallbones, familiarly known to his intimates as “fussy-breeches,” because he lived in a dream-fever of commercial enterprise, and believed himself to be a Napoleon of finance–he ran a store, at which he sold a collection of hardware, books, candy, stationery, notions and “delicatessen”–was on his way to the boarding-house for breakfast–there was only one boarding-house in Barnriff, and all the bachelors had their meals there.
He was never leisurely. He believed himself to be too busy for leisure. Just now he was concentrated upon the side issues of a great irrigation scheme that had occupied his small head for at least twenty-four hours, and thus it happened that he ran full tilt into Peter Blunt before he was aware of the giant’s presence. He rebounded and came to, and hurled a savage greeting at him.
“Wher’ you goin’?” he demanded.
“Don’t seem to be your way,” the large man vouchsafed, with quiet good-nature.
“No,” was the surly response.
“Kind of slack, aren’t you?” inquired Peter, his deep-set blue eyes twinkling with humor. “I’ve eaten two hours back. This lying a-bed is mighty bad for your business schemes.”
“Schemes? Gee! I was around at half after five, man! Lying a-bed? Say, you don’t know what business means.” The little man sniffed scornfully.
“Maybe you’re right,” Peter responded. He hunched his great loose shoulders to shift the position of a small sack of stuff he was carrying.
He was a man of very large physique and uncertain age. He possessed a burned up face of great strength, and good-nature, but it was so weather-stained, so grizzled, that at first sight it appeared almost harsh. He was an Englishman who had spent years and years of hardy life wandering over the remotenesses of the Western plains of America. Little was known of him, that is to say, little of that life that must once have been his. He was well educated, traveled, and possessed an inexhaustible fund of information on any subject. But beyond the fact that he had once been a soldier, and that a large slice of his life had been lived in such places as Barnriff, no one knew aught of him. And yet it was probable that nobody on the Western prairies was better known than Peter Blunt. East and west, north and south, he was known for a kindly nature, and kindly actions. These things, and for a devotion to prospecting for gold in what were generally considered to be the most unlikely places.
“Right? Why o’ course I’m right. Ef you’se folk jest got busy around here, we’d make Barnriff hum an elegant toon. Say, now I got a dandy scheme fer irrigatin’ that land back there–”
“Yep. You gave me that yesterday. It’s a good scheme.” The giant’s eyes twinkled. “A great scheme. You’re a wonder. But say, all you told me that day has set my slow head busy. I’ve been thinking a heap since on what you said about ‘trusts.’ That’s it, ‘trusts,’ ‘trusts’ and ‘combines.’ That’s the way to get on to millions of dollars. Better than scratching around, eh? Now here’s an idea. I thought I’d like to put it to you, finance and such things being your specialty. There’s Angel Gay. Now he’s running a fine partnership with Restless. Now you take those two as a nucleus. You yourself open a side-line in drugs, and work in with Doc Crombie, and pool the result of the four. The Doc would draw his fees for making folks sick, you’d clear a handsome profit for poisoning them, Gay ’ud rake in his dollars for burying ’em, and Restless?–why Restless ’ud put in white pine for oak, and retire on the profits in five years. Say–”
“What you got in that sack?” inquired Smallbones, blandly ignoring the other’s jest at his expense.
“Well, nothing that’s a heap of interest. I’ve been scratching around at the head waters of the river, back there in the foot-hills.”
“Ah, ‘prospects,’” observed the other, with a malicious shake of the head. “Guess you’re allus prospectin’ around. I see you diggin’ Eve Marsham’s tater patch yesterday. Don’t guess you made much of a ‘strike’ in that layout?”
“No.” Peter shook his head genially. The little man’s drift was obvious. He turned toward the one attractive cottage in the settlement, and saw a woman’s figure standing at the doorway talking to a diminutive boy.
“Guess though you’ll likely strike more profit diggin’ spuds fer folk than you do scratching up loam and loose rocks the way you do,” Smallbones went on sourly.
Peter nodded.
“Sure. You’re a far-seeing little man. There’s a heap of gold about Eve’s home. A big heap; and I tell you, if that was my place, I’d never need to get outside her fences to find all I needed. I’d be a millionaire.”
Smallbones looked up into his face curiously. He was thinking hard. But his imagination was limited. Finally he decided that Peter was laughing at him.
“Guess your humor’s ’bout as elegant as a fun’ral. An’ it ain’t good on an empty stummick. I pass.”
“So long,” cried the giant amiably. “I’ll turn that ‘trust’ racket over in my mind. So long.”
He strode away with great lumbering strides heading straight for his humble, two-roomed shack. Smallbones, as he went on to the boarding-house, was full of angry contempt for the prospector. He was a mean man, and like most mean men he hated to be laughed at. But when his anger smoothed down he found himself pitying any one who spent his life looking for profit, by wasting a glorious energy, delving for gold in places where gold was known to be non-existent.
He ruminated on the matter as he went. And wondered. Then there came to him the memory of vague stories of gold in the vicinity of the Barnriff. Indian stories it is true. But then Indian stories often had a knack of having remarkably truthful foundations. Immediately his busy brain began to construct a syndicate of townspeople to hunt up the legends, with a small capital to carry on operations. He would have the lion’s share in the concern, of course, and–yes–they might make Peter Blunt chief operator. And by the time he reached the boarding-house all his irrigation scheme was forgotten in this new toy.
CHAPTER IV
JIM PROPOSES
Eve Marsham was in two minds of hailing Peter Blunt as she saw him pass on his way to his hut. She wanted him. She wanted to ask his advice about something. Like many others who needed a sympathetic adviser she preferred to appeal to Peter Blunt rather than to any of her sex in Barnriff. However, she allowed the opportunity to slip by, and saw him disappear within his doorway. Then she turned again to the boy sitting on the rough bench beside her, and a look of alarm leaped to her soft brown eyes. He was holding out a tiny pup at arm’s length, grasping it by one of its little fore paws.
“Elia, how can you?” she cried. “Put him down, instantly.”
The boy turned a bland, beautiful face to her. There was seemingly no expression beyond surprise in his pale blue eyes.
“He likes it,” he said, while the whimpering pup still wriggled in his grasp.
Eve made a move to take the wretched animal away, but the boy promptly hugged it to his misshapen breast.
“He’s mine,” he cried. “I can do what I like with him.”
There was no anger in his voice, not even protest. It was a simple statement of denial that at the same time had no resistance in it.
“Well, don’t you be cruel,” Eve exclaimed shortly, and her eyes turned once more in the direction of Peter Blunt’s hut.
Her pretty face was very thoughtful. Her sun-tanned cheeks, her tall, rounded body were the picture of health. She looked as fresh and wholesome as any wild prairie flower with her rich coloring of almost tropical splendor. She was neatly dressed, more after town fashion than in the method of such places as Barnriff, and her expressed reason for thus differentiating from her fellow villagers was a matter of mild advertisement. She made her living as a dressmaker. She was Barnriff’s leading and only modiste.
The boy at her side continued his amusement at the puppy’s expense. He held it in his two hands and squeezed its little body until the poor creature gasped and retched. Then he swung it to and fro by its diminutive tail. Then he threw it up in the air, making it turn a somersault, and catching it again clumsily.
All this he did in a mild, emotionless manner. There was no boyish interest or amusement in it. Just a calm, serious immobility that gave one the impression of a painting by one of the old European masters.
Elia was Eve Marsham’s crippled brother. He was seven years younger than she, and was just about to turn sixteen. In reality he was more than a cripple. He was a general deformity, a deformity that somehow even reached his brain. By this it must not be imagined that he was an idiot, or lacking in intelligence in any way, but he had some curious mental twists that marked him as something out of the normal. His chief peculiarity lay in his dread of pain to himself. An ache, a trifling bruise, a mere scratch upon himself, would hurl him into a paroxysm of terror which frequently terminated in a fit, or, at least, convulsions of a serious nature. This drove the girl, who was his only living relative, to great pains in her care of him, which, combined with an almost maternal love for him, kept her on a rack of apprehension for his well-being.
He had another strange side to his character, and one of which everybody but Eve was aware. He possessed a morbid love for horror, for the sufferings of others. He had been known to sit for hours with a sick man in the village who was suffering agonies of rheumatism, for the mere delight of drawing from him details of the pains he was enduring, and reveling in the horror of the description with ghoulish delight.
When Restless, the carpenter, broke his leg the boy was always around. And when the wretched man groaned while they set it, his face was a picture of rapt fascination. To Eve his visits on such occasions were a sign of his sympathetic nature, and she encouraged him because she did not know the real meaning of them. But there were other things she did not know. He used to pay weekly visits to Gay’s slaughter yard on killing day, and reveled in the cruel task of skinning and cutting up the carcase of the slaughtered beast. If a fight between two men occurred in the village Elia’s instinct led him unerringly to it. It was a curious psychological fact that the pains and sufferings which, for himself, he dreaded with an almost insane abhorrence, he loved and desired in others.
He was a quaint figure, a figure to draw sympathy and pity from the hardiest. He was precisely four feet high. One leg was shorter than the other, and the hip was drawn up in a corresponding manner. His chest was sunken, and his back was hunched, and he carried his head bent sideways on his shoulders, in the inquiring attitude one associates with a bird.
He was his sister’s sole charge, left to her, when much younger, by their dying mother. And the girl lavished on him all the wealth of a good woman’s sympathy and love. She saw nothing of his faults. She saw only his deplorable physical condition, and his perfect angel-face. His skin and complexion were so transparent that one could almost have counted the veins beneath the surface; the sun had no power to burn that face to the russet which was the general complexion among prairie folk. His mouth had the innocence of a babe’s, and formed a perfect Cupid’s bow, such as a girl might well be proud of. His eyes were large, inquiring and full of intelligence. His nose might have been chiseled by an old Greek sculptor, while his hair, long and wavy, was of the texture and color of raw silk.
He was certainly the idol of Eve’s heart. In him she could see no wrong, no vice. She cherished him, and served him, and worked for him. He was her life. And, as is only natural, he had learned to claim as his right all that which out of her boundless affection it was her joy to bestow.
Suddenly the yelping of the pup brought Eve round on him again. He was once more holding it aloft by its tail. The girl darted to its rescue, and, instantly, Elia released his hold, and the poor creature fell with a squelching sound upon the ground. She gave a little scream, but the boy only looked on in silent fascination. Fortunately the poor pup was only badly shaken and hastily crawled away to safety. Elia was for recovering it, but Eve promptly vetoed his design.
“Certainly not, you cruel boy,” she said sharply. “You remain where you are. You can tell me about the chicken killing down at Restless’s.”
In the interest of the subject on which Eve desired information Elia forgot all about the pup. He offered no protest nor made the least demur, but forthwith began his story.
“Sure I will,” he said, with a curious, uncanny laugh. “Old Ma Restless is just raving her fat head off. I was around this morning and heard her. Gee! She was sayin’ things. She was cussin’ and cussin’ like mad. So I jest turned in the yard to see. It was just as funny as a circus. She stood there, her fat sides all of a wabble, an’ a reg’lar waterfall pourin’ out of her eyes. He! He! But what made me laff most was to see those checkens around her on the ground. There was ten of ’em lying around, and somebody had choppened off all their heads. Say, the blood was tricklin’, an’–well, there, you never did see such a mess. It was real comic, an’ I–well, to see her wringin’ her fat hands, and cussin’. Gee! I wonder she wasn’t struck for it, an’ her a woman an’ all.”